My faith in western culture is restored by the news that the 2010 edition of the American Idol tour is struggling to sell tickets, to the point that this year’s visit to western New York, which was to be next month in Buffalo, was cancelled due to lack of interest. American Idol ‘s particularly cloying brand of mediocrity has crowded out legitimate musicians for too long.

Yet it may be that the live-music well has been poisoned beyond recovery. Too many shows, in my estimation, are too large, turning the highest-interest concerts into too-predictable performances sandwiched by death-march traffic jams, for which you pay an astronomical price to be a part of.

Tours are struggling this summer. Lawn ticket prices for Creed’s July 31 show at Darien Lake Performing Arts Center have been slashed to $10 until midnight tonight. And Creed, a rock band whose finest hour was a decade ago, was even being somewhat responsible in its pricing when the event was originally announced, $26 for the pavilion, $16 for the lawn. There’s no comparing Creed with Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, but look at what that sold-out show Aug. 14 at Darien Lake will cost you: A top ticket price of $131, or stand on the lawn for three hours for $41, staring at Petty on a video screen. With a traffic jam coming in and going out. And by the way, a beer is $8.

Touring the fascinating but labyrinthine Artisan Works gallery at 565 Blossom Road can take a full afternoon.

But tonight (July 20), you can get a comprehensive look at this art emporium in a new documentary screened at Nazareth College’s Callahan Theater, 4245 East Ave., Pittsford. Artisan Works: A Work in Progress was directed by Thomas Marini and written by Otto Bruno. It examines the gallery’s 20-year development and includes interviews with resident artists and supporters.

The event begins with a 5:30 p.m. reception in the upper lobby, followed by a 6:30 p.m. lecture by Marini and a 6:45 p.m. screening and discussion with Artisan Works founder Louis Perticone.

Rochester has no lack of lively arts festivals throughout the summer and early fall. But I guarantee that none of them are quite as uninhibited as the Buffalo Infringement Festival, runnning from July 22 to Aug. 1.

Blame it some hallucinogenic ingredient in Erie County’s water supply. Or maybe its artists are just more willing to let their hair down. In any event, the festival will sprawl over 50 Buffalo locations, including many offbeat events at the University of Buffalo.

At 10 a.m. on July 31, for example, a game called Play/Share Beyond/In will begin at Sugar City, 19 Wadsworth St. Participants will navigate between the city’s actual streets and “a fantastic alternative history city,” using mobile phones, social web media and live performances.

Also intriguing is an experimental theater work called “MommyDaddyBaby,” concocted by three members of the University of Buffalo’s visual studies department. They’ll use video, dance, dialogue, “inflatables and crab walking to fascinate and appall.”

Nazareth College’s first dance festival turned out to be a major success, though I’m positive it had much to do with the college’s choice in visiting artists. It’s difficult not to be intrigued by Elizabeth Streb and STREB Extreme Action, which is exciting and thrilling due to its dangerous nature. For sure, it’s not any old boring dance performance!

And then add that Streb is both an area native and SUNY Brockport grad; it was just a perfect match for the first year of the festival. Rochester has a lot of pride for artists with roots in the area, so the fact that there was some feeling of ownership with Streb definitely helped build a following.

My only big criticism is that there were a couple obvious ommissions from the festival, those being our hometown professional dance companies, Rochester City Ballet and Garth Fagan Dance. There were excuses made: RCB was performing at PACE University in New York City for the River to River Festival (except they finished their performances the first weekend of Nazareth’s festival, so they were back with plenty of time to perform in Rochester), and Garth Fagan’s dancers just began their Summer Intensive, a program for up-and-coming dancers to study with Fagan (but a performance of the company *could* have fit in their schedule). Instead, we just heard Jamey Leverett and Garth Fagan in talks with the visiting choreographers, but those talks would have, and should have, been reinforced with actual dancing. Not to mention the talk between Fagan and Streb was much too short for the $20 cover charge (Streb had to get back to a tech rehearsal by a certain time and introductions ended up being longer than necessary, cutting the hour short).

I’ve written often lately about dwindling government funding for the arts. Today, I’m happy to be proven wrong – at least for now. The national Institute of Museum and Library Services has just given three substantial grants to local museums.

The Strong National Museum of Play received $149,500, said museum spokeswoman Susan Trien. It will use the money to make digital images of about 14,000 pre-1930s dolls, toys and games in its collections. Some objects from this two-year project will appear in a 2012 exhibit, “America at Play”

George Eastman House was awarded $145,512 to design and test a multimedia interactive exhibit, “Out of the Box: Toward a New History of Photography.” It will use photos, motion pictures and other artifacts from the museum’s own collections.

Dancing in the Grass II — Nazareth College Dance Festival’s presentation of local dance companies in an outdoor setting, similar to the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in the Berkshires — turned into Dancing in the Chapel on Monday evening due to the threat of thunderstorms. Instead of dancing on Nazareth’s green lawn, the concert was moved inside to Linehan Chapel.

Of course, the rain held out after all, but the decision to move the concert indoors was made for the safety and health of the dancers. As Lindsay Reading Korth, Nazareth Arts Center’s director, put it, “When your body is a Stradivarius, you take care of your instrument.”

Monday night’s crop of dance companies are some of the area’s finest. Bill Evans Dance Company, Geomantics, BioDance and Bush Mango Drum and Dance all performed. The theme of the festival being “What is dance,” the varrying styles of the concert were good fodder for the ensuing panel discussion, too.

Hello blogging land! *Peeks around the corner to see if anyone’s still there*

I’ve had quite the couple of weeks since I last left you with Jazz Festival coverage. Along with some much needed R&R, I’ve been hard at work on the upcoming Nazareth College Dance Festival, which gets underway this Saturday. If you haven’t read about Elizabeth Streb, the founder of the STREB Extreme Action company, which performs at this inaugural festival, then you should because she just may be the most unique person I’ve had the privilege to interview. Not only is she a Rochester native, but she’s also a SUNY Brockport grad, which means that her success as a major choreographer in New York City can be traced right back here.

Her story is an unlikely one. Always a thrill-seeker, she never danced before majoring in it at SUNY Brockport. It’s a miracle she was accepted to the dance program — both for her and the school. While she may have had some technique to gain in order to catch up with the other dancers in the program, she’s really carried the reputation of Brockport forward as she’s changed the face of modern dance.

The Rochester Public Market is one of the Top 10 treasures of this city. There is no more perfect a Saturday than sitting in Java’s at the Market, with a cup of coffee, eating a Mexican breakfast taco, a couple of bags of $1 vegetables at your feet, packed alongside some newly acquired duck breasts and some high-end goat cheese from the European Cheese Shop that you didn’t need but had to have, absorbing the eclectic calavcade of Rochesterian costumes, waiting for the Dick Storms/Paul Nunes jam session to break out. Life is that good.

The market has been expanding in recent years. Cooler merchants, weirder vegetables, more parking, the most excellent and creative people in the city. On some summer Saturdays, the market is too big. It is better, perhaps, to go on Tuesdays or Thursdays, when there are fewer people. Well, maybe not better. More manageable, if you’re into that.

Each summer, my wife Meredith and I make a 90-minute pilgrimage to the Corning Museum of Glass in Steuben County.

It’s a well-worn path that my parents used to travel, intent on buying Steuben vases and checking out the museum’s formidable collection of antique glass. Meredith and I bring home less booty than my parents, but we probably spend more time ogling the historic bowls, vases and beakers.

Last weekend, our lure was an exhibit of Tiffany blown glass from 1895 to 1920. Crafted in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s studio in Corona, Queens County, these graceful pieces bear no resemblance to the gaudy patchwork lamps now sold as “Tiffany-style.”

Simple, elegant vases glisten with an iridescent sheen, applied over floral designs inspired by Art Nouveau. Tiffany also adapted Egyptian and Chinese shapes for these small-scale masterpieces. We desperately wanted to take home one vase brimming with morning glories, but the Plexiglas cover was too thick.

Strong National Museum of Play has a clear monopoly on games, with thousands of board and electronic games in its archives.

But now, Strong also may have a monopoly on Monopoly.

The Rochester museum has just acquired an extremely rare example of Monopoly, made long before purported inventor Charles Darrow sold the rights to Parker Brothers in 1935. Strong’s folk-art version was created between 1910 and 1917 by the Heap family of Altoona, Pa. Hand-drawn and colored, it’s the oldest known Monopoly game with all of its original playing pieces.

Of course, Strong also owns a valuable hand-colored version by Charles Darrow, and about 65 other Monopoly sets and related games. For more information about the museum’s gaming empire, go to www.museumofplay.org.

Jeff Spevak has shaken the hand of Johnny Cash. He has done a shot of whiskey with Bo Diddley. He sang with Tina Turner for 12 seconds. His Top 10 albums of all time include 17 by Bob Dylan. He likes dogs, the Cleveland Indians and wine. His favorite books are Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. He likes to eat Chilean sea bass.

Catherine Roberts: Lead Local Editor/Life, is the mother of two teenage boys. She's so used to being overbooked that when there's a spare moment, she feels the needs to know what's going on around town to fill the gap. Favorite things in Rochester include the museums, Red Wings games and concerts. But most of the time, you'll find her and her husband, Chad (the Democrat and Chronicle's overnight editor), at a bowling alley, the sidelines of a ball field or walking a dog in their Irondequoit neighborhood or Durand-Eastman Park. If you have any ideas, please email at cathyr@DemocratandChronicle.com

Diana Louise Carter was born at Rochester General Hospital the same year it opened and reared in Bristol, Ontario County. After college and grad school, her first reporting job was on a small newspaper in Western Massachusetts. She returned to Rochester in late 1987 to work for the Democrat and Chronicle. Carter covers agriculture and banking. She lives in the Upper Monroe neighborhood of Rochester with her husband and three children.

Anna Reguero, a former Democrat and Chronicle music critic, a clarinetist and a graduate of Eastman School of Music, is a doctoral student in musicology at State University of New York at Stony Brook.